


Becoming

by lodessa



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Healing, Identity, Incest, Recovery, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection, Sexual Content, Trust, references to canonical past sexual abuse, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:07:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12029757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: When she’d still been a child, with childish dreams and naivete, Sansa had wanted what Cersei had.  She’d never thought about what it meant.  Even as she discovered how wrongly her trust had been placed, she never asked herself why. She’d never asked what made Cersei the way she was.Now, she discovers, she doesn’t have to ask.  She doesn’t have to ask; because, she has been similarly transformed.





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> I first started writing fic for this fandom when people were still privacy locking fic out of fear that GRRM would find it (before the show / "legitimized fanfic"), in an era where we weren't using portmanteaus (smushnames) for ships. So I wrote my first Jonsa fic, before it was even called Jonsa. In fact, I think I might have the first fic in the pairing tag. I guess true love really does last a lifetime (even when that love is a canon that keeps betraying you ;-P!)
> 
>  
> 
> **A Few Points of Clarification:**
> 
> *This fic is intended to take place somewhere after they retake Winterfell but before Jon heads to Dragonstone. 
> 
> * I have referenced the sexual abuse that Sansa suffered from Ramsay and the resulting trauma as lightly as I felt I could without being dismissive, but it is mentioned.
> 
> *Yes, this is a Jon/Sansa fic, not a Jon & Sansa fic. Proceed accordingly.

There was a time, Sansa remembers, when there was nothing she wanted more than to be like Cersei. She’d changed the way she wore her hair and the dress style she favored. She’d hung on to the Queen’s every word.

 _That was before you understood what it meant to be like her,_ she tells herself.

She’d learned from her even afterwards though. Amidst her horror and resentment, she’d begun to realize more and more dark truths about her former idol, but she had kept watching her and noting how she went about things.

Lions and wolves are beautiful creatures but poor pets. Their claws and jaws make them too dangerous. 

_I’ve learned to be dangerous,_ Sansa doesn’t regret. 

Cersei played a role in that, teaching her about the weapons at a woman’s disposal, not just with her words but with her actions.

She thinks, a little sadly, both are at the height of the power when they hunt in a group. _We were never meant to be alone._ This conflict has nearly obliterated Cersei’s pride as much as Sansa’s pack.)

Beside her, Jon sleeps fitfully. He’d seemed surprised, that first night when she’d crept into his room, unable to face the terror of her empty one, even with Brienne watching the door.

He’d been kind though, as she wrapped herself around him. It isn’t something they’ve talked about, but she thinks he might understand.

He might be the only one who could understand, the only one she can trust. 

_Was this how Cersei felt?_ Sansa has to wonder, She’s heard the more than rumors, knows that father was never prone to flights of fancy or impulse.

 _She wasn’t much older than me,_ she knows, _When they gave her to King Robert._

When she’d still been a child, with childish dreams and naivete, she’d wanted what Cersei had. She’d never thought about what it meant. Even as she discovered how wrongly her trust had been placed, she never asked herself why. She’d never asked what made Cersei the way she was.

Now, she discovers, she doesn’t have to ask. She doesn’t have to ask; because, she has been similarly transformed.

Once, only that once, when she had been deep into her cups, Cersei had talked about Rhaegar, the silver haired prince her father had promised her. 

Sansa had been promised a prince as well, one with hair of gold. 

Neither of them got what they were promised. Though, from the longing in Cersei’s voice as she said the Dragon Knight’s name, she had not come to realize it was nothing to desire.

Sansa wonders, as she curls closer into her brother’s warmth inhaling the scent of him as she buries her face against his neck, which had come first for Cersei.

Was it when she was robbed by the dornish princess of her girlhood dreams? The moment when she was handed off as a prize to secure her father’s legacy? (The once dear promise of being queen now an ironic fate to be trapped in.)

For herself, she thinks, it wasn’t just one moment, but them all together, chipping away at her day by day like a craftsman with his chisel. Perhaps, it isn’t that personal. Perhaps life was just like the sea eating away at the cliffs it crashes into, each league suffering the same fate as the one before it.

You had two choices, she knew that. You could let it just keep happening to you or you could fight back.

No that wasn’t right.

You could openly resist, of course, make a scene… but that wouldn’t get you anywhere. She’d known that from the start. You had to be smart if you wanted to do anything but make things harder on yourself.

You had to be clever but also ruthless if you wanted to win. 

Sometimes it wasn't enough though, she recognized, thinking of the things that had befallen all the clever people she knew, Tyrion in chains, House Tyrell cut back to the roots, Cersei paraded naked through the streets, the sharpness under Littlefinger’s voice when he mentioned Sansa’s mother, those bruises that no one else could see anymore on her body but she would never stop feeling. 

_We’re all alive though, aren’t we?_ she reassures herself.

Jon is alive too, she thinks, watching the rise and fall of his breath. She’s not sure how he made it to this point, as like father as he can be, but now that she has him she will keep him that way. A surge of possessiveness swells within her.

She’s never quite sure how to make sense of it, the feelings she has now about Jon. Are they because he is her brother? Are they in spite of that fact.

It seems a lifetime ago that she was in the Vale, thinking of him willingly for the first time. It was Alayne who had changed things perhaps, as much as Ramsay. 

Would things be different, she asks herself, if she had actually seen him when they were children, instead of letting her eyes glide over space that should have been empty? That’s what mother did, her best to not see him standing right there, and Sansa supposes she’d just followed her lead without thinking. She can’t know, how things would be now if she’d stopped for moment now and then to regard him as her brother as father so clearly wished her to.

Perhaps, she thinks, it would be simple then. She can’t help wondering if it is simple for Cersei. 

_Would I do as she has done?_ she has to ask herself, _To keep us safe_.

 _I’d be smarter about it,_ she decides and then shudders as she realizes that would likely be Cersei’s response to a similar dilemma.

“Sansa?” Jon stirs and twists towards her, blinking blearily but clearly concerned, “What’s wrong? Was it a nightmare?”

It wouldn’t be the first time she woke in panic and fear, though she has found she is not the only one to suffer so. Perhaps that is why he is so patient with her, understanding when she unexpectedly flinches. 

She thinks it’s more than that, though. _It’s just Jon_ , she believes, _That’s who he is, at least with me._ Reaching up to caress her face, he presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“I’m fine,” she assures him, snuggling her body closer into his, wrapping one arm over him so her hand rests between his shoulderblades, “Just thinking.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he offers, and to his credit he has not balked on those times when she has.

She trusts him. That’s at the root of all of this. She has learned to suspect everyone, but Jon is different. He’s helped her in ways she suspects no one else could have.

“No,” she tells him, knowing what his answer to her question would be: You aren’t like Cersei. You could never be.

Instead she presses up into his body, straining her face up to his level, kissing him thoroughly as he lets himself be guided onto his back, Sansa rolling with him so she ends above him.

Sometimes she wonders how she found it in herself to take the risk, that first time. It wasn’t the first time she’d sought the comfort of his presence beside her, but that night he’d curled behind her (only the once, after that he’d been all too careful to never come up behind her) and she’d started, heart racing. It was just a moment, time for her brain to catch up with her body’s memory.

They had talked about it that night, something she’d thought she would never do. Then, she’d found herself going even further into the unexpected.

“I don’t want to be like this, forever,” she had told him, “Every time I flinch it’s a reminder, a way for him still to have power over me.”

“It will fade,” Jon told her, but she shook her head.

“I have to replace those memories, bury the associations under something else.”

He looked taken aback and she wants to believe a little wounded, “Sansa, are you saying you want me to find you a hus-”

“No,” she shuddered at the thought, “I know that there will be a time where we both have to seal new alliances that way, but I can’t… not until I conquer this first.”

“You sound as though you have a plan,” he studied her before smiling softly, “You always have a plan.”

“You’re my plan. You are the only one I trust. Say you will.”

“Me?” Confusion was evident on his face as he asked, “What can I do?”

“Help me get used to being touched, without it being-”

“Touched?” 

She almost retreated, softening the idea she didn’t know she’d been working towards until just then into something less bold. 

“And other things,” she replied, taking his hand in her trembling one and guiding it over her pounding heart.

“Sansa,” he might have gasped, “But I’m your brother!” It’s-”

“I know you must find it distasteful. I don’t expect you to want to-”

“No,” the look on his face shifted and she realized it wasn’t revulsion to the idea at all that had him jumping out of his skin as he told her, “That’s exactly the problem. You are my sister and I know that should be the end of the sentence, but you are also the most beautiful woman in Westeros and you are in my bed.”

“You can’t know that I am!” she contested, mostly to buy herself time to sort through her reaction to the true admission in that statement.

Because she hadn’t really thought this through, a rarity these days, something that only seemed to happen when it came to Jon. She hadn’t questioned where her creeping into Jon’s bed was going, why she was doing it… and she hadn’t sorted through what it really meant for her to make this request of him. 

“You are to me,” he brought their hands back in his direction and kissed the inside of her wrist, “And I can live with knowing that I have crossed lines that are forbidden, I have before. I just don’t want to be the cause of that for you.”

“What Ramsay did to me, that wasn’t forbidden. That was allowed. He had every legal right to my body as his wife.”

“Any reasonable person would not expect-” he interjected, but she wasn’t finished.

“From the time I can remember, I thought that propriety was important above all else, and all that made me was a blind little fool. I don’t care what’s considered decent and seemly anymore, not for my own sake at least but only appearances.”

“But you do care about appearances,” Jon pointed out.

“They’re important, but I’m not keeping them up with you. This is me trusting you, in all ways. I’m trusting you with my secrets, with my body, with my reputation.”

“I don’t understand why, but I shall endeavour to by worthy of that trust. I am at your disposal.”

He’d promised and he has been, Sansa watches his face as he looks up at at her, one of his hands reaching up to sweep her hair back as it falls in their faces. 

He looks at her as no one else has, not with the covetousness of men like Littlefinger, the pity of people Tyrion and Margaery. He doesn’t look through her, or past her. He doesn’t look at her as something to be consumed or a means to an end.

Maybe that’s why, she thinks. Maybe that’s the reason she can and does set aside suspicion when it comes to Jon.

He isn’t like the others. 

Maybe it was always going to be this way. Maybe only a man raised by father could ever have been this way.

He murmurs her name as she moves over him, feeling the warmth spread through her, like a candle banishing darkness from a chamber.

His hands are gentle, though she knows they are capable of the opposite. That knowledge is almost intoxicating, the feeling that he would crush her enemies with the same hands that would never so much as bruise her. Through the soft material of her nightgown, she feels their heat on her ribcage, moving so slowly upwards.

When she first heard the rumors, first heard of father’s bold treasonous claims, Sansa had thought of Robb and turned away in disgust. She could not imagine how someone could do such a thing. Now though, now she only has to think of Jon and the soft look in his eyes and she knows. She knows how.

Jon’s kisses trail down her neck and Sansa arches her back, pressing her hips closer to his, grinding them with a growing urgency.

They hadn’t gotten here right away, of course. 

“Can I?” he’d asked, a good deal later, fingertips running along one of the straps at the shoulder of her nightgown, with his other hand he caressed the swell of her breast.

She’d nodded, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation running through her. He’d gently slid the strap down off her shoulder, leaning in a bit closer and pressing his lips to where it had once been.

It was nothing like having one’s clothing torn from you, she’d affirmed to herself, an unfamiliar tension growing within her.

His kisses had moved across her chest, slowly zigzagging lower, eyes always watching.

“Is this okay?” he’d asked dragging his lips around the side and underside of her breast, where her nightgown had fallen away without the strap holding it in place.

She’d nodded, reaching out and stroking his hair as he continued inward. When she’d bit her lip, it wasn’t a sound of pain she wanted to hold back but something else entirely, her thighs pressing reflexively closer against each other.

She lifts her arms up so that he can pull her nightgown over her head, not that it isn’t already bunched up around her waist. She shifts a little more, bringing herself into more deliberate contact with solid bulge growing beneath her.

“Sansa,” he murmurs, straining up to kiss her again, “Sweet Sansa.”

His hands run up her thighs, appreciatively not possessively.

“Come here,” he urges, encouraging her upwards to draw her hips towards his face.

She hadn’t known, what she was fumbling towards… not really. The impulse was there, but her vision of the direction was foggy at best.

“Trust me?” Jon had half questioned and half entreated, arms braced on either side of her.

For a moment she hesitated, torn between heart racing terror and a twisting desire for something within her. She took a deep breath though, looked into his eyes and nodded, bracing herself.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and then her mouth, before sinking down to kneel between her legs, gingerly taking hold of her smallclothes. She lifted her hips.

Her nightgown slid up to her waist, exposing her further, and she had to keep her eyes locked on Jon to keep calm… Well calm wasn’t the word. She was a swirl of sensations and feelings and she stayed fixed on him the same way one had to hold a steady spot of focus to hold while twirling in a dance.

She could trust him. Jon wouldn’t hurt her, not if he could help it.

Jon’s lips found the inside of one ankle and then the other, trailing up her inner calves and thighs. Sansa shivered, but not with the cold, as his breath blew against her. Gentle kisses covered just below the joining of her legs, and she felt herself collapse more completely down into the bed.

He moved in instead of up as she had anticipated. Sansa’s hips bucked up in surprise and something else as a wave of sensation crashed over her. Hands soothing and intensifying over her skin, Jon paused, mouth pressed close against her, before slowly moving his tongue and she discovered that everything to this moment had been a pale shadow leading up to it.

Again, she expected him to stop, to shift, but he didn’t. Her legs shook but it was different from the trembling of dread. She ceased to concern herself with it. She ceased to concern herself with what might be or had been. For just a little while, the world narrowed down to the feeling of Jon between her thighs, and the sensations he was drawing from her.

The one truth she knew was that she needed him to keep going.

She did not anticipate the relief that would wash over her, the feeling of complete peace and joy that engulfed her in those moments afterwards, once Jon had brought her to the destination she didn’t know she was pressing for.

“I wanted to…” Jon rocked back onto his knees, wiping his face with the back of his hand, “I thought-”

“I didn’t know,” she confessed, her body tingling and immoveable, “I knew there was something but I had no idea...”

“So… good?” he asked, carefully, smoothing her gown back into place.

For a moment he seemed self conscious, unsure. Perhaps she hadn’t responded appropriately but she didn’t know what she was supposed to say or do. 

She wasn’t sure what the right words were, but she nodded, reaching out towards him, “Better than lemoncakes,” she offered, hoping that her reputation on that front would express what she didn’t know how to.

“Than lemoncakes?” Jon grinned while he gasped in mock shock, “I seem to recall a particular person claiming there couldn’t possibly be anything in the world better than lemoncakes.”

She found herself laughing with him, drawing him back down towards her, both of them giggling as their heads pressed together, before she claimed his mouth with her own.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I just wish…” he furrowed his brow slightly, “It should have been from the start.”

Now, now she wraps her legs around his face, fearless in her nakedness, only muffling her sounds of enjoyment for fear of those sounds making it past the chamber door.

Cersei must have been worrying about that same danger for most of her life, and yet she has continued and Sansa no longer is mystified by why.

Perhaps, if things had gone differently, she could have wanted things differently. Perhaps, the same could be said for Cersei. Things had gone this way though, for both of them, and it may be that Sansa has become the woman who tormented and betrayed her, but in the end it doesn’t matter. She wants what she wants and she’d be a fool to let squeamishness, a reaction to the the ghost of her memories, control her.

She had forgotten, she thinks, for so long she had forgotten what it was like to want something actively, rather than want the absence of various things. She wants this, she recognizes. She wants to kiss Jon as she moves down over his body, hands spread over his chest. She wants more, as she moves them lower.

There would have been a time when she would have frozen in reaction to his hands gliding over her hips. There was a time where freezing up was her reaction to too many things. Now she reacts differently. 

“Jon,” she murmurs, holding his face in her hands, “It’s time.”


End file.
